the governor of new hampshire ("live free or die") signed the state's civil unions statute into law today----sensible new england---california would have one, but arnie keeps vetoing civil union bills passed by the legislature---i don't know why maria keeps letting him do that---

"let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." ---amos 5:24

so while everybody is freaking out over some super-tuberculosis, the cdc is scrambling to deal with any crisis---why? because bush has consistently cut funding to the cdc, like everything else in federal govt except for the army and enforcement of the police state here at home.

– 2002: Proposed a $174 million cut.– 2003: Proposed a $1 billion cut, with no new funding for preventive health divisions working on TB.– 2004: Proposed an increase of “less than 1 per cent.”– 2005: Proposed a $263 million cut, while simultaneously proposing a $270 million increase in abstinence education.– 2006: Proposed a $500 million cut which would have slashed grants to state and local health departments like the Fulton County Health and Wellness Department involved in this week’s TB-scare.-2007: Proposed a $179 million cut, in addition to unspecified plans for more CDC “savings.” –2008: Proposed a $37 million cut, including “massive funding cuts in proven health protection programs

but hundreds of millions for useless abstinence-only sex education programs---and few million for aids in africa while refusing to fund condom distribution----

30 May 2007

for the next couple of weeks, if you are not eating strawberries every day, you should be---actual real strawberries, not those pale woody things you get out of season----these are from florida, the peaches are from georgia and are great----the late freeze trashed 60% of the crop but what's left, everyone agrees, are mighty tasty----

29 May 2007

jan and paul are quite a pair and although i resisted at first, i think that she is definitely a worthy succesor to our old tammy faye---granted, they are charlatons of the highest order, but you just gotta like them better than westboro baptist's pastor fred, who is one truly frightening child of god and can be accessed via godhatesamerica.com or godhatesfags.com, seriously---

27 May 2007

you have to see this amateur videoof a fight between a herd of cape buffalo, a pride of lions, and two crocodile----it's violent, but amazingly nothing dies----i'm pretty sure that you have never seen anything like it---

a while back, i scanned iris' scrapbook of stuff about gary, but i had never really gotten into looking at it all, since it was always too depressing --- well, all the killing in iraq (1,000 americans since last memorial day) has been on my mind, especially knowing what we went through, and when a friend of mine brought up the subject in some e-mail the other day, it got me to looking and rummaging through iris’ stuff and the internets to find out exactly where it happened and something of the context, which i had never done before --- even found some pictures of the area that were taken the month after he died --- he was in the 25th infantry division based at cu chi, which is about 40 miles northwest of saigon --- it was known as the southern terminus of the ho chi minh trail and sat atop miles and miles of tunnels that the viet cong guerillas began building in the 1940s as they were fighting the french --- the cu chi tunnels are now a tourist attraction in what remains communist vietnam --- during the tet offensive in late winter 1968, the viet cong used the tunnels as their headquarters --- gary's division was part of the defense of saigon which, along with the old imperial capital at hue and the big marine base at khe sahn, was a focus of the fighting---the tet offensive, as it is known, was named after the vietnamese lunar new year, tết nguyên Đán or feast of the first morning, 30-31 january 1968, which is when the vietcong and north vietnamese army launched surprise attacks against some 100 towns across south vietnam---there was a front page story in the atlanta journal/constitution on 10 february (he was killed on 9 February), and it had this to say:

elements of the US 25th Infantry Division clashed in three battles in saigon’s suburbs with bands of communist guerrillas and reported killing more than 300, the american command said. US casualties were put at seven dead and 45 wounded. The US brought 4,000 GIs into the saigon battle.

one of the biggest battles took place at the small village of hoc mon, on saigon’s [northwest] perimeter, where three companies of the 25th infantry reported killing 176 communists in a day-long battle that ended at dusk friday. the americans lost four killed and 15 wounded at hoc mon.

two companies of the 25th hit a communist force just east of hoc mon and killed 102 in a four hour fight. three americans were killed and 30 wounded in that battle.

i think gary was probably one of the three killed in that last one east of hoc mon, but I’m not sure --- the official citations and all say it happened at lan trung, in the vicinity of hoc mon, but I haven’t been able to locate such a place on any map ---the communists took huge losses, ten to every one american, some said --- one source says 1,500 american, australian and korean dead, 2,800 south vietnamese, and 45,000 viet cong and north vietnamese --- plus 14,000 civilian dead, 630,000 homeless --- by the time the tet offensive was winding down in april 1968, the viet cong as an army had been destroyed --- it didn't matter: a harris poll was showing 60% of the country believing it to have been a major defeat, in spite of secretary of defense robert mcnamara and the rest of the administration touting the massive communist losses as evidence of a great strategic victory --- you still find a lot of stuff about how we would have prevailed in vietnam if we had just had had the will and if it weren't for the press sensationalizing the war with eye-witness reporting on the teevee and if there hadn't been all those traitorous war protesters (most of whom had never heard of dien bien phu) there is still some real bitterness out there, but when walter conkite went to vietnam and appeared on the teevee to report on 27 february 1968 that it "seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in stalemate," it was all over --- some still blame him for "losing" vietnam but president johnson knew he had lost public opinion and, on march 31, announced he wouldn't run for re-election --- peace negotiations began in paris later that year --- it was a major turning point, although the war would drag on until 1975, with another 20,000 american deaths along the way --- my parents still despise johnson ---

posthumously gary was awarded a purple heart; the distinguished service cross, the army's second highest decoration; as well as a second bronze star, the army's fourth highest decoration ---

26 May 2007

In the United States, the tipping point from a majority rural to a majority urban population came early in the late 1910s, the researchers say. Today, 21 percent of our country is rural although some states – Maine, Mississippi, Vermont, and West Virginia – are still majority rural. In North Carolina, a rural majority held until the late 1980s.

19 May 2007

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions. "The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbingto me."

18 May 2007

they really are---religious fanatics everywhere---christianity, islam, hindu, it doesn't matter, they're gonna be the end of us if we let them--"can't we all just get along"? well, no, probably not until we fix whatever it is that's causing people to get all crazy religious like that---

What has been happening in India is a serious threat to the future of democracy in the world. The fact that it has yet to make it onto the radar screen of most Americans is evidence of the way in which terrorism and the war on Iraq have distracted us from events and issues of fundamental significance. If we really want to understand the impact of religious nationalism on democratic values, India currently provides a deeply troubling example, and one without which any understanding of the more general phenomenon is dangerously incomplete. It also provides an example of how democracy can survive the assault of religious extremism.

excellent points in the article include this one:

The real "clash of civilizations" is not between "Islam" and "the West," but instead within virtually all modern nations — between people who are prepared to live on terms of equal respect with others who are different, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity and the domination of a single "pure" religious and ethnic tradition. At a deeper level, as Gandhi claimed, it is a clash within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality, with all the vulnerability that such a life entails.

03 May 2007

don't you just love the queen's hats? where does she get them? is there a queen's hat maker? the pic was taken today at jamestown, virginia, where she is visitingto help celebrate the 400 anniversary of the first english colony in america---she shoulda been included in crowns, but that was all about black women and the hats they buy or make (a lot of the latter)---every other specie it's the male that shows off, in ours, except for gay homosexuals, it's the female---poor phillip, standing off in the background somewhere with his hands behind his back

broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime― mark twain

truly, what of good

ever have prophets brought to men?

craft of many words,

only through

evil your message speaks.

seers bring aye

terror, so to keep

men afraid.

―

aeschylus

he cannot be a gentleman which loveth not a dog.

john northbrooke, c. 1570

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

john stuart mill in a letter to conservative mp sir john pakington (march 1866)